Relevance: GS-2: Bilateral, Regional and Global Groupings and Agreements involving India and/or affecting India’s interests.

Key Phrases: Bandung, polarisation, North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), G-7, BRICS, Beijing Declaration, New Development Bank (NDB), SWIFT payments system, Unilateral Economic Sanctions, Non-Alignment Movement, G-20 summit.

Why in News?

• Three back-to-back summits in the past fortnight have helped settle the dust on who stands where on the Russian invasion of Ukraine: the BRICS (June 23-24), followed by the G-7 summit (June 26 and 27), and then the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Summit in Madrid (June 29).
• The outcome of all three summits points to a growing polarisation, even battle lines being drawn, between the Western Atlantic-Pacific axis and the Russia-China combine.

BRICS Summit:

• The BRICS summit was the first such multilateral grouping Russian President Vladimir Putin attended since Ukraine was invaded (Feb 2022), and both Chinese and Russian Presidents aimed the unilateral economic sanctions imposed by the United States and the European Union.
• India agreed to join the summit showed India’s commitment to BRICS as an alternate grouping of economies and spotlighted India’s refusal to shun Russia, and agreement to set aside the two-year standoff with China’s People's Liberation Army at the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in favour of multilateral meetings such as BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO).
• The BRICS Beijing Declaration was a consensus document, as each member cited differing “National Positions” on the Ukraine issue.
• In addition to BRICS’s New Development Bank (NDB), which has approved about 17 loans totalling $5 billion for Russian energy and infrastructure projects, the “Contingent Reserve Arrangement” (CRA), and a BRICS Payments Task Force (BPTF) for coordination between their central banks for an alternative to the SWIFT payments system, Russia also proposed building a global reserve currency based on a “basket of currencies” and trading in local currencies.
• Russia also committed to providing more oil and coal supplies to BRICS countries, which will raise red flags in the West, as will the possible admission of countries such as Argentina and Iran that have applied to the BRICS mechanism.

G-7 Summit:

• After the BRICS summit India attended the G-7 Summit which is proof of India’s flexibility in dealing with both sides of the conflict.
• In several statements, the G-7 targeted Russia’s war in Ukraine and China’s economic aggression.
• However, its outreach documents — on “Resilient Democracies” and “Clean and Just Transitions towards Climate Neutrality” — the only ones that India and other invitees signed on to, were devoid of any mentions of either.

NATO Meeting:

• At the NATO meeting, there was little sign of any restraint as the group comprising the U.S., Canada and European countries committed to more NATO actions against “Russian aggression”.
• These included, for the first time, a reference to “systemic competition” from China as a challenge to NATO’s “interests, security and values”.
• The presence of the U.S.’s trans-Atlantic and trans-Pacific military allies at one conference sent out a clear message against a perceived Russia-China alliance.
• The launch of another Indo-Pacific coalition — “Partners in the Blue Pacific” (PBP), i.e., the U.S., the U.K., Australia, New Zealand and Japan, in addition to last year’s Australia-U.K.-U.S. (AUKUS), is another signal of the U.S.’s growing focus on countries that it has military alliances with, against its adversaries.
• Apart from the Indo-Pacific partners at the summit, there were leaders of the five countries that have applied to join NATO, i.e., Finland, Georgia, Sweden, Ukraine, and Bosnia Herzegovina.
• The direct message was that NATO would no longer consider Russian sensitivities on the subject of NATO expansion.

Where does this leave India?

• India has committed to a singular strategy, albeit a defensive one, that does not condone Russia for its attacks on Ukraine, but one that does not criticise it either.
• First, India has joined China as a global economy that has increased its intake of Russian oil, and where India continues to source fertilizer, cement and other commodities from Russia using different means, including even paying in the Chinese Yuan to circumvent sanctions.
• Second, India is working to diversify its defence purchases from Russia, hostilities with China are high, and a strategic tilt towards the U.S. and Quad partners in the Indo-Pacific is growing.
• On the multilateral stage, too, India remains a balancing voice in the room: along with Brazil and South Africa, India ensured that the BRICS Beijing declaration did not carry the Russian position on the Ukraine war or any criticism of the West while making certain with other partners of the global South that the G-7 outreach documents carried no criticism of Russia and China.

India must lead:

• In 1955, it was in such a similar moment that India took leadership (along with countries such as Indonesia and Egypt at the Asian-African Conference of 29 newly independent nations, at Bandung), a conference that eventually led to the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM).
• Again, it is time for New Delhi to seize the moment for leadership in a world that is becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the growing polarization and the disruption due to the Ukraine war.
• In Germany, India along with Indonesia tried to ensure that both sides of the world attend the G-20 summit in Bali in November, amid growing worries that leaders of at least nine member countries (Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Republic of Korea, the U.K., the U.S., as well as the European Union) could stay away from due to Russia.
• As the next President of the G-20, India must shoulder the burden of ensuring that the G-20 stays together, and reassuring those worried by the brinkmanship of the West on one side and Russia and China on the other.

Gather the like-minded

• At the United Nations General Assembly, a majority of 141 countries voted to castigate Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, but much fewer, only 93, voted to oust Russia from the Human Rights Council.
• Only 40 countries joined the U.S. and Europe-led sanctions regime against Russia.
• This represents a large pool of independently-minded countries that do not see it in their national interest to blandly choose one side over another.
• Therefore, India’s national interests would be better served by building a community of those like-minded countries, that cannot afford the hostilities and want to avoid the possibility of a global war at all costs.

Conclusion:

• This is the time to rethink India’s role in “growing the unaligned area” and bring the “objective and balanced” outlook, to the forefront of India’s strategic policy, by channelling that thought from Bandung, to Bali and Delhi this year.

Source: The Hindu

Mains Question:

Q. With the Ukraine war shaping the future world order, it is time India brought a balanced outlook to its strategic policy. Discuss.